Durango Police Department Will Transition ALPR Program from Flock Safety to Axon

Our Take

Credit to Durango Police for posting the council meeting where Chief Brice Current laid out the plan: when the city's Flock Safety contract lapses in 2027, Durango will move its automated license plate reader program to Axon. That's a real announcement, but let's not confuse a vendor switch with a surveillance rollback. The cameras keep watching, the plate reads keep getting logged, and the only thing changing is whose cloud the data lives in and whose logo is on the pole.

This matters because Flock has become the household name in this fight, which means every city that quietly shifts to a competitor like Axon, Rekor, or Motorola risks flying under the radar of public scrutiny. Axon's pitch to departments is the same as Flock's: more cameras, more AI-flagged reads, more retroactive search of your movements. Residents in Durango deserve the same transparency fight over data retention, sharing agreements, and audit access with Axon that advocates have been demanding from Flock nationwide — a new contract is the moment to demand guardrails, not assume none are needed.

If you're in Durango or anywhere else watching your city quietly rebrand its surveillance stack, check our camera map to see what's already been documented nearby, and hit up our take-action page for ways to push your council for real oversight before the next vendor contract gets signed in the dark.